Echo
by Pantz
Summary: Far away, into a whisper, a memory that you will never forget, even though you have long since been forgotten.


_Disclaimer: Everything from HP books belongs to JK Rowling_

_I accidentally deleted it. Sorry :)_

**__**

**_Echo_**

**_Can you hear it? Can you_**

_**The whispers of your past?**_

_**The delicate voice of a love long ago?**_

_**Can you hear the screams?**_

You don't meet her in a bright place. It is a bar, just a left turn before Knockturn Alley where the tattered drapes sway without wind and shadows are the only thing that sit at your old wooden table.

It fits, the blackness of your surroundings lulls you into a sense of comfort you never got outside the shadows. It's as if you belong right here, at this table, with her.

Yet, not with her. Never with _her_.

It's half past eight and she is late. She always used to be late, but a small part of you feels, knows, that she would never come to see you. Not here, not in these times with you being who you are and her placed, so firmly, on the other side.

_By his side_, you allow yourself to think bringing the whiskey glass to your lips.

You drum your fingers on the table as the minutes slowly roll by. Outside, you can hear the storm clouds begin to roll in. You can sense a sensation of calm surround you, and your fingers stop right in the motion of their descent. Your eyes move wistfully out to the window and you realize, without much anger or contemplation, that you have spent your life waiting for her. You have spent your life watching doors until her willowy silhouette comes walking through.

And then she does, hair long as you remember it and a brightness in her eyes you know this war will never kill away.

Suddenly, you wish you hadn't met her in this place. She doesn't belong on a creaky stool with liquor in one hand and a cigarette in the other. She belongs in a place with bright Chandeliers, colored roses and ivy winding around ivory pillars, and soft music dancing in the background.

She belongs somewhere you would never go.

"Hello, Severus," she says as she nears your table. Her eyes take in the laden drunk and flickering lamps. For an instant, she looks straight into your eyes, before sitting down and staring out the window. Crooked, colored hat walk past of all different colors and you choke on your breath until she speaks again.

"How are you," she seems to be holding back from you and it takes you a few seconds to realize that she didn't smile at the sight of you.

Not like she used to.

"I," you begin, but stop because you have an overwhelming need not to lie to her, not her, your old best friend, _your love_.

Maybe, you wonder, she, too, feels the pull of yesterday. Maybe she sees you and remembers a time before even your relationship fell to the carnage of blood.

At your pause, her eyebrows raise and she smiles slightly. Maybe she can remember you, here, now, as a boy who allowed himself to get tangled in a spider's web, but who had, and even now does, loved her despite it. Maybe she can tell the she's your life's biggest regret.

"Are you okay," she asks with a slight laugh in her voice. "You haven't said a word."

"I... I've missed you." It is the first sentence you have been able to speak. You had been so afraid, terrified, that she wouldn't come. You seem mystified as her green eyes stare at you, try to understand you.

But, you cannot make out her emotions as before. She seems distant from you, miles away still, so that you are left to wonder why she ever came in the first place.

"It's funny," she says smoothing out a crumpled napkin on the table, "but I've missed you, too."

You brighten up at that, until you look into her brilliant eyes and realize she gets no pleasure at the sentiments.

Somewhere outside, thunder roars, but you don't hear it as you stare deeply into her eyes that once invited you, and wonder why she left her beautiful home, her husband, to come here and lament the fact that she's near you.

"I almost didn't," she says lifting her eyelashes quickly, "come, I mean. I wasn't sure..." but she stops again and folds her hands into her lap. She's cold, you can tell.

You fight down the smile that even after almost five years, even after a wall has been put between your two lives, she can still read your mind.

"I didn't think you would. It's been such a long time."

A night long ago flashes in your mind. Her long hair flowing over her nightdress as she finally cuts the last strings that bonded you. She had true anger in her eyes and you had a pain in your heart you never wish to feel again.

It clouds your mind and for a moment you confuse the two in your mind. For a moment she is fifteen with flaming eyes and lips in an angry pout.

"A lifetime," she says, but so softly the mirage is not broken.

It is inside of you, always, your love for her. It hasn't changed and hasn't lessened, but instead has distorted everything you have become.

You are a Death Eater, a murderer. You are on the winning side of a fight that will allow wizards to finally dominate, but that will destroy everything she has ever held dear. And as the fog of a fifteen year old girl fades away, you finally understand the glint in her eyes, the weariness in her voice.

You are, after all, the opposition and she took a great risk in coming to you, here, alone. For all she knew death could have been waiting for her.

It is torture how the ghosts of childhood can strangle you, even now.

"Are you afraid of me," you whisper as you stare into your whiskey glass. The ice catches the light and it almost looks as if you are drinking liquid gold.

"Should I be?" she looks at you earnestly for the first time. Her cheeks have color, her lips are pursed, and she has some of the fire you remember. "Should I fear for my family?" She adds in a painful whisper that tears through your skin and stabs you straight through your heart.

"Lily," you haven't said her name all night. You haven't spoken it in nearly five years and it chokes you as it comes for air.

_I would never hurt you,_ you want to tell her. _How could you think that? I love you._

But, the word family seems to freeze you as you remember what that now means. It is no longer that sister you always hated or those muggle parents you never could understand.

Black, messy hair, hazel eyes, and a contemptuous smirk as his wand juts threateningly close to you. Is it the first time the thought that she truly does love him has crossed your mind?

"I can't believe I came," she says enraged at your silence at such an important moment. She gets up before you can stop her, but as you open your mouth to call her back, she turns on you.

"I though you would be somebody else," she says. "That the rumors weren't true. That... I thought..." she stops again and dabs her eyes.

"Lily..." you begin

"No."

"Lily, please..."

"NO!" She screams. "You were better than this, Sev," she says using a name that was buried with your friendship. "You could have been somebody!"

You forget, in the moment, that this thought has crossed your mind. In the dark of night, when you know that **HE** wouldn't have the slightest inclination that your hidden desire is to just escape, somewhere, anywhere.

But, you have always been trapped.

You answer her in anger, hating her presumption, her words. You answer her in anger, hating that she never stopped thinking you wouldn't be like this. She never gave up hoping.

"What about you? You go off and marry someone like Potter..." you spit his name as if it were poison.

"How dare you? How dare you judge him? You don't even know..."

"I don't know! I was tortured by him for over five years!"

"He was a kid. A stupid, arrogant child, but now _he_ is risking his life for the greater good while_ you_ and _your_ friends go off and torture muggleborns!"

Her face has turned bright red and she is panting. Her eyes are fierce, with love for someone you have always hated, with hatred for someone you couldn't help but become.

You feel sick.

"So then why don't you leave... Mudblood?"

Words slipping again. Poison, drenching any of the last hints of fondness she may have felt for you.

The ties that bond quickly fall.

She doesn't take that word flung at her like she did at fifteen. She steps back, surprised, but then shakes her head at you as a small tear falls down her cheek. "Sometimes," her voice is calm, gently like a light summer's breeze. "I wonder if I ever really knew you."

She walks away, walks back to her life within the resistance, walks back to Potter.

You feel sick. A rancid taste enters your mouth and the cold air stings your eyes.

You'll never see her again. That you know for certain. She will go back and live that golden life you know she was meant for. And you will be a memory. Less than a memory. Memories are cherished, and she has no reason to love you. Not with the war. Her path, as well as yours, was chosen long ago.

Did you think, then, that the lines of adversity were not clearly drawn? That you could have been impervious together, untouched by all the death that cuts through her heart so deeply?

Would you have risked walking into the lion's den? Would you have broken down at her feet, the feet of her husband, and begged for the forgiveness you could never truly feel?

To you, she was never one of them with their soiled blood and dirty hands. She never could be that. And because of your blindness you never did realize something that to her has always been so clear.

That one day, you will meet her across a battlefield, and although you would never lift your wand at her, you wouldn't think twice about lifting it at her husband, her best friend... her son.

_The opposition_, you whisper in a swift breath staring at where she stood moments before. She is long gone now, but you can still hear the echo, or is the ghost of an echo, of her footsteps walking away.

Far away

Far away, into a whisper, a memory that you will never forget, even though you have long since been forgotten.

The hair is muffled, strangling. Someone outside is screaming, a mudblood, a blood traitor, you never did care to find out the difference. New customers walk through the door and sit at the table across from your own.

You stay standing.

A group walks into the bar. You can hear Dolohov's animalistic laughter over the thunder in your ears. They nod at you, as if your friends, comrades in the good fight,

You still don't move.

"Sev," you hear her, a young ten year old who hung on your every word.

"Sev," she giggles, you mind exploding because you know she's right.

You went down a path that put blood on your hands. Muggleborn blood. _Her_ blood. You can't take it back. You can't escape it.

And you know that one day, it will be the death of you.

Outside, the sky flashes blue. It illuminates you skin and for a moment you appear to be dead.

She had thought about you.

She had listened for news about you.

But, and you know this with gut clenching pain, she had never loved you. How could she spending years watching you turn into something she reviles?

Suddenly, you feel the chill of the night creep out at you. You hadn't known what to expect when you saw her again. A small part of you, that single part left that is still the Severus Snape Lily was once best friends with, expected a dream, a happy end to your long and frightful saga.

You shake your head at that and push the image of her smile out of your mind. You walk out the door. It begins to rain the moment your feet hit the cobbled streets of Diagon Alley.

The storm, you know, has only just begun.

_**Adieu **_


End file.
